Science Fiction Though the Decades

Friday, January 17, 2014

1991: The Unwound Way (Adams, Bill & Brooks, Cecil)

Ingrained with mythology,
allegory and author indulgence (3/5)

Cover: Richard Hescox (1991)

Taking a look at my 553-book database and using a few analysis
tools, some interesting things arise: originally, when I started reading SF in
2007, my focus was on late-80s/early-90s science fiction with authors like Greg
Bear, Iain M. Banks, William Gibson, and Kim Stanley Robinson; now, the most
represented years in my collection are 1968 and 1974, both years with 20 books
in my collection. This is in part to my interest in John Brunner’s work but
also because I’m more willing to dabble in forgotten paperbacks and take the
chance of discovering a classic with the risk of stumbling upon some stinkers.

So, now when I do buy a book from the late-80s/early-90s,
it’s for the sake of nostalgia and filling a gap in my library which hasn’t
seen any new life breathed into its already stellar repertoire; however, I
always hesitate. The unknown novel The Unwound Way, with an uninviting
cover by two unknown authors was, obviously, an impulse buy. It is not a
regrettable decision, but my time definitely could have been spent more wisely
on one of my other 154 unread novels.

According to the “About the Authors” page, Bill Adams had written
mystery fiction under the name T. M. Adams and, with some interweb research,
wrote some short stories
in the same genre in the 1970s and 1980s. Cecil Brooks lived in Pennsylvania and
his written work seemed to have been nil until 1991 when he co-authored The
Unwound Way and its 1994 sequel The End of Fame. I reckon either the
sales or feedback about the novel (only one review published in Locus, #369
October 1991) weren’t forthcoming because nothing else has been written by
these two fellows since 1994… which is a shame because the talent is there,
just not the delivery.

Rear cover synopsis:

“ALL THE WORLDS A STAGE

Evan Larkspur dreamed of greater glory than his play writing could
ever bring him. But his newfound career as officer on a star-survey mission
ended in disaster almost as soon as it had begun. And when he returned home,
the only survivor of a freak accident that had flung his ship out of known
space, the found that a century had passed—and though Larkspur the playwright
was now famous, Larkspur the explorer was a wanted man.

Buried in his memory was the fate of his ship; hidden on his person
was the star—access data that would have been worth several fortunes—if it were
not scrambled beyond repair. The repressive First Column government coveted the
data and would not hesitate to strip Larkspur’s mind in an attempt to decipher
it.

There was nothing a deceased playwright or a vanished explorer
could do against the Column. And so Larkspur fled to the fringe worlds, hiding
his identity, intent only on survival—until, on an obscure planet called
Newcount Two, he discovered a powerful legacy he never knew he had…”

------------

During his university years, Larkspur was involved in three
things: girls, writing plays, and the brotherhood of Kalanists. While his plays
never found popularity, his frolicking was intermittent and successful and his
association with the Kalanists brought his peace of mind; ‘twas a time of
self-discovery and relative freedom under the First Column government. However,
life wasn’t challenging enough and simply being known as a failed playwright
didn’t win any hearts, so the young Larkspur enlisted in the Navy was sped off
to the stars with something less than wanderlust.

The mission to map the stars was interrupted by a disaster
onboard; all indications pointed towards
manmade sabotage and awakening the officers from cryogenic sleep had
mixed results of insanity and dissociative catatonia. Larkspur was one man who
awoke with his mind intact and he quickly drew to a position of leader, one who
must confront the disaster, the perpetrator and find a solution for the ship
stuck in the dimensions between space and time. His steady hand doesn’t salvage
the ship or save the crew, rather he is shifted further along his world’s
timeline into a future he hardly recognizes… yet the world recognizes him—not
his face, but his accomplishments.

Unwilling to enter the
limelight, Larkspur assumes an alias while maintaining a series of menial jobs
shuttling around the sphere of human affairs. His spell of innocuous existence
is broken when Senator Condé hires him for a mission of pure
subterfuge, an action fit for the repressed flamboyant actor in the playwright.
His mission, with promised protection from the influential Senator, calls for
him to jaunt off to Newcount Two, a small uninhabited Earth-like planet, for
the purpose of securing an archeological dig site which greatly interests the
Senator. Reportedly holding ancient artifacts of a giant bipedal race, two
sections of the dig site, something like a barrow, are to be secretively
cordoned off and the rest of the dig to go ahead as planned; the motley crew, a
group of experienced amateurs rather than expert professionals, is composed of
one dashing lass, “an eccentric oldster, an academic know-it-all, a shirttail
boy and his ineffectual father, a monk, a mystic warrior, and a misanthropic
redhead” (46).

Acting as “His Excellency, Alun
Parker, Sub-Commissioner for Non-Human Artifacts” (29) representing the Column,
Larkspur adopts the officious manner which his roles exudes, yet additional,
more natural mannerisms creep into his persona which cause some of the site
workers to silently question his role—surely, not all officers are well-read in
theater, Kanalism, piloting, and philosophy. Regardless, his pristinely pleated
uniform convinces even the strongest minds at camp, but this doesn’t stop an
interloper from attempting murder. Larkspur’s quick reflexes as a pilot save
his life, the life of the little vixen named Ariel, and the evidence onboard
the sabotaged flitter. His suspicions piqued yet vaguely directed, Larkspur steeps
in wanton ire.

When the furtive Larkspur returns
to camp, the dig crew have revived one of their most important machinations for
the dig and, in hasty attempt to test it, activate a physical switch which
drains the lake near their camp. From the draining waters of alkalized lake
rises a human artifact, a “broad circular shaft” (83) capped with a white dome
and dripping sticky effluvia. Mesmerized by the unreal sight in contrast to the
drab life at the archeological dig, the ragtag crew speed off by foot toward
the towering phallic monolith, which they scale, frolic upon, and ultimately
descend into without casting a word of discovery or warning to anyone… no one
at all.

Descending into the depths of the
planet, they assume they assume they are alone. They naively destroy the
control circuits, spend some time gaping in awe at the human figures in the
subterranean park and its extremely vast range, and translate the tale of
twenty-five generation of humanity which found the planet, which was already in
an artificial state due to a long gone alien race with fantastic technological
prowess. Coming to some sense, they decide to ascend back to the crown of the
wet ashen pillar in the middle of the drained lake, but at the elevator they
are met by the Iron Brotherhood, a labor union of contract killers. It turns
out that Senator Condé’s secret barrow of artifacts is, in fact, this
very subterranean world and his insurance on the plot is guarded by his
cronies. Larkspur feels himself instantly become immaterial, expendable.

In a bid to escape the predation of rifle
shots and crossbow quarrels, Larkspur heads his subservient team into a
graveyard’s crypt which is the sole entrance into Hellway. The Hellway is
hundreds of kilometers long build by the Elitists and terminates at the north
pole where they hope to exit and call for help. Originally built as a
culturally inspired obstacle course for the prior human tenants’ rite of age,
the numerous obstacles chosen for each player was chosen by the world’s
computer system. Over the last few hundred years, however, the system and the
world have deteriorated to the point of being even more deadly they it was
before. Angered by the viciousness of the Elitists, some of Larkspur’s ragtag
team damn the Elitists’ inhumanity and damn their own misfortune.

The ritualistic Hellway
initiation for the coming of age isn’t as plainly trialing as the group first
thought; rather, even the start of the maze is fraught with confusion and
danger; the Hellway was “living poetry, an epic series of ‘objective
correlatives’ for official Elitist virtues” (218), but even the most basic of
mazes was laden with perplexing solutions, some which injured the trespassers
and some which killed the errant. Belittled, Larkspur reflects, “This big phony
stage set has reduced us to characters in a plya” (181). Allied lives are lost
yet end-result expectations fizz with hope; meanwhile the Iron Brotherhood, in
their own brutish and ham-fisted way, make their way toward the pole end of
Hellway where a seemingly final aerial race to the finish to hosted between two
intermixed teams of Larkspur’s ragtag team and the assassins.

Now leading with his wisdom and
by example, confidence still grows among the dwindling crew; however, Larkspur
is still plying his grand subterfuge in the equally as grand theatre of the
absurd known as Hellway. He doubts his vaporous relationships with some members
yet invests even his heart in a coital alliance. With the maze coming to an
obvious terminus, his guise of Column importance cannot continue when official
inspection nudges into the planet’s extraordinary matters. Larkspur may think
his deception ends with the maze, but an even greater challenge awaits him on
the planet’s surface—the real world, with problems of galactic importance.

------------

Internally consistent, meticulously
plotted, and burbling with subsurface Greek allegories, it’s too bad that most
of the novel (onwards from page 130 to the final page 339) is steeped in a
bitter brew of references to Greek mythology, a subject which I’ve never been
interested in; therefore, any allegories which refer to these same allegories
are utterly lost on me. I know the name—Daedalus, Icarus, Minotaur, etc.—but nothing
more than the skim of their mythological fame; again, any deeper subcutaneous references
to the mythologies fall in a vacuous area of my brain.

The numerous references began to irritate
me, so I did something which I’ve never done before: I contacted the author. Prior
to entry in the vast length of Hellway, everyone went through a mirror maze,
then they went through three other trials (mazes), with a final maze at the
end. Even with my limited knowledge of Greek mythology, I felt a tacit connection
to something deeper in those same mythologies. So, rather than bone up on the
wealth of Greek mythology, I opted to contact Cecil Brooks; I wrote, “The book is
obviously influenced by Greek mythology, similar to Samuel R. Delany'sEinstein Intersection(1967) …. could
you enlighten me on the significance of the number of tests which Larkspur had
to endure” (January 8, 2014). The reply thus read, “Perhaps if you finish reading our
book, you’ll find that questions relevant to the text are answered in the text”
(January 9, 2014).

So, the book, according to one of
the co-authors, is self-evident. I’ve waited ten days to do this

http://www.wikipedia.org

review in
order to throw more brain power at this spectral self-evidence; perhaps I
thought about it too much, but the attempts to grasp at straws here doesn’t
change my opinion of the book’s 3-star rating. That I can apply my thoughts to
the analysis, I must spoil the party a bit by giving details about the mazes.
In my attempt to apply as much ancient Greek relevance, I hit upon the classical
Greek elements of fire, earth, water and air:

(1) The mirror maze: light,
represented by fire, tricks the mind with illusions, reflections, and
mirages—this misguidance could be consciously caused by the viewer based on
emission theory, which postulated that the eye emitted light rather than accept
it. As with the passage of light through the ether, passage through the
mirrored maze takes time. The senses of patience and touch are required to navigate
the subtle, deceptive and infuriating maze.

(2) The moth swarm: represented
by fire and air, the moths seem to be an inane addition to the landscape
of Hellway until the waft of a predatory pheromone; the harmless airy moths
then attack with fire, paralyzing and dissolving the victim where they stand. As
air acts as a vehicle for fire’s growth, so too do the moths offer a vehicle
for progress, yet in a much more literal sense.

(3) The eel balloon: represented
by air and water, eels are aqueous by inferred nature, they are dominate
in their domain on Hellway as no other life form vies for supremacy of its
waterways, yet the Hellway also has a mysterious side. During the eels’ the breeding
cycle, a swarm is motivated to fill some of its brethren with hydrogen; thence
they float to their spawning grounds, but while aloft they are out of their
element and open to exploitation.

(4) The ivy-walled passages:
represented by water and earth, the denizens of the rocky crawlspace are
translucent globs of locomotion feeding on the verdant ivy which lines the
passages; they affect what is needed while allowing non-vital elements, such as
a person, safe passage through its doughy entity. The earth (of Newcount Two) and
its stone are strong, unyielding to man’s passage yet fragile to time and kind
to its smallest creatures, which Man is not. As time had lapsed in Hellway,
certain passages decline in functionality and regress to the torments of fire,
which casts a red light of warning.

(5) The aerial race: in the
obvious median of air but bowing to the elements of earth and fire due
to the trial’s purpose of propulsion; each team collects gold rings (earth)
suspended by stony stalactites while being propelled by the constant power of
fire on their backs. In the lithesome yet
innocent ether of air, earth can be a firm foundation for confidence while fire
can drive passion, coerce inhuman feats.

Perhaps I thought too much about
it… but then again, I also found a number of homosexual innuendos (as with the
white pillar in the lake). A playwright joins the navy? That’s a good start. If
a book is self-evident, as the author suggests, any theme which I think
reinforces itself is, in fact, a solid case for an overarching theme.
Regardless of my insight, I doubt very much that either the elements of the
innuendos were part of the intended spread.

Lastly, I must mention one thing:
an unusual gem of a sex scene which had me guffaw aloud; it started nicely and
ended in a mood-shattering bomb of hilarity:

I reached for her waist where she
stood and drew her close, my lips pressed, in that position, against her pale,
taut belly. I could feel a distant tom-tom heartbeat, hers or mine, and tasted
lightly salted girlflesh. There was a brief moment of civil war--north or south? (247)

I like the invented word “girlflesh”
but it feels a bit sexist, devaluing a woman to mere skin. If I remember one
part of this book in twenty years’ time, it will be the little civil war prior
to Larkspur’s own “little death”.

------------

I can appreciate The Unwound
Way for its prodding allegories on my mythologically-deaf mind. I can also
appreciate the interconnectedness, finesse, and overall control of the novel.
Yet, the recurring trials in Hellway feel like, as I mentioned to Mr. Brooks in
my email, an “author's unbridled eagerness for expressing a wealth of
imagination” (January 8, 2014), much akin to Jack L. Chalker’s Midnight at the Well of Souls (1977).

With 154 unread novels on my
shelves, I don’t think the sequel The End of Fame (1994) will grace the
walnut crannies. In the end, Larkspur is an interesting character with a
strange history and in even stranger circumstances; unfortunately, it doesn’t
make for a particularly illuminating read perhaps, again, because of my allergy
to mythology. For those with a mythology fetish, however, I would highly
recommend this!